Gundam AGE – 14

For what is easily the best episode of Gundam AGE to date — even trouncing the one from the week before — it saddens me that the only emotionally positive thing I can say is, “I was prepared for the worst.” Yurin’s death was all but guaranteed with all the flags that were raised in recent episodes and more or less cemented by the fact that the excruciating pain of loss in war is a tried and true scenario in the Gundam franchise. That painful feeling is almost always compounded by the lack of alternatives, as our Gundam hero is powerless to do anything except watch his love interest die before his very eyes. In some series, she’s killed by someone else; in others, she sacrifices herself to protect our hero like Yurin did here. From a screenplay standpoint, the instant moment of understanding just before Yurin’s killed was really well done, with their X-Rounder telepathic ability mirroring the traditional Newtype one, so my only regret is that I was too prepared and didn’t allow myself to get caught up in all the emotions.

As is often the case, Flit’s tearful explosion of anger provided little consolation, even as he took Desil apart limb by limb; however, Gundam AGE did surprise me with Flit showing an enormous amount of restraint by not finishing Desil off. I get the feeling that this decision will haunt him in the future, but as with all righteous protagonists, it would probably reflect more poorly on Flit’s character if he lost himself completely. The question is, will he be able to show the same amount of restraint when he has an opportunity to put a bullet through UE’s supposed leader Gerra Zoi? Odds are he will be able to, at least until he’s forced to kill Gerra in his humongous mobile suit Defurse, as losing himself in a fit of rage to the point of no return doesn’t really send a good message to younger viewers. If this series is truly intended to be reboot of the franchise, then I would imagine that they have to keep the morals of the story intact. I’d like to see Flit give the UE what they deserve just as much as the next person, but his lines about how the UE are unforgivable are likely just for show. If this suspicion proves to be true, it’s hardly a disappointing turn of events though. Gundam AGE isn’t exactly trying to take the franchise in a new direction after all and instead, merely trying to refresh it for younger generations (at least from what I’ve seen).

In other developments, I had to question Grodek’s idea to raid Ambat and take it down from within — and lead the boarding party no less. I am however willing to overlook how crazy that plan is since the writers are clearly setting things up for a face-to-face meeting between the Diva crew and Gerra Zoi. If Flit’s arc is expected to wrap up next time with Asem’s picking up from episode sixteen onward, then there really needs to be some dialogue between the opposing sides to further the overall story before the time-lapse. Mankind is still in the dark about who the UE are and exactly what they’re after, so it’d be somewhat disappointing if we went into the next arc with the same questions.

Yeah I would have liked it if Flit was the one to kill Yurin but this is the tried and tested formula for Gundam I guess.
But still, YURIIIIN!!!! T_T

So next episode is the last episode for 1st gen? And it looks like they will have a face-off with the leader. Hopefully we’ll hear their motives for this. But if that’s so, then what?
If the leader is captured, how will the 2nd generation go with the battle with UE?
Guess it hangs in the next episode.

I don’t understand why didn’t Flit just take Yurin back to the Diva if he really cared about her? He knows she has the same ability as him and she was ‘lonely’. Not to mention how his adopted parent just gave her up so easily. What makes it worse is that this was all a plot device to get her to die.

Why would Flit take Yurin on board the Diva? The Diva is heading into a war zone so taking her with him would be endangering her life. If Flit knew that the UE would try to kidnap her then this could have made sense, but Flit obviously did not know the UE was looking for her.

Think about it, why would Flit’s future wife stay on the Diva, where one could argue is as dangerous as being somewhere else…and that she( Yurin) could have just as easily came on board if she really wanted to be with him.

I should have said my third point, before saying the result. The plot device was to have the parent at gunpoint..

well from my understanding Desil’s threat to her was: you know what happens if you refuse. which probably implied he was going to kill her on the spot. so from her perspective it’s either: die right here and now without ever getting to see flit again, or go knowing she’ll die but at least having the opportunity to see him again.

Yurin’s death was well done. Unfortunately, most of the emotional punch is gone because I saw it coming months before it actually happened. I like Flit going berserk though. Desil’s survival is also not surprising, he’s only four years old its pretty obvious he’s going to stick around for the next generation.

I’m also kind of upset that the Titus only got a few seconds of screentime. That was the best design of the AGE-1. At least it was pretty awesome opening an entire docking gate.

You know, despite the fact that the events in this episode were about as obvious as they could be to anyone who’s seen Gundam or, well, a lot of just about anything; I get the feeling that this show will be really good for Sunrise.

I mean, after all, had I seen this episode as a kid (who are clearly the target audience here), I probably would have been like ;O;

Yurin’s death had even more impact on me than the death of Stella or of any other Gundam female lead I’ve seen before. I dare say the quality of Gundam Age has increased especially recently.I just do hope they can provide for a better story in the next arcs, hopefully without the typical female dying in EACH and every arc, that would be horrible. Please don’t just be a retelling of thesame story only with better mechs…

Flit should kill Desil for killing Yurin… like Kira who kill Rau le creuset because he kill Frey and Lockon that kill the innovator who kill his girlfriend… and I like Yurin VERY much, but I’m not that sad about her death because I already anticipated that this will definitely happened, though if it didn’t it’ll be much better…. I hope that Asem will get a pretty girlfrind like Yurin… lol although I doubt that because main heroine always looks boring for some reason.

Bugger, Yurin was easily the most human of the Gundam Girl Suicide Squad; the rest of them (Flay, Stella, Anew) were either shallow husks personality-wise or just plain annoying. That said, this episode was indeed predictable, but it was still sad.

That said, I never really saw any important development in the relationship between Flit and Emily, so seeing Emily Asuno in Divine’s link pretty much means that Flit basically just settled for Emily when he really wanted Yurin. I don’t even think Emily knows about Yurin (or at least how important she was to Flit) at this point.

Flit’s probably going to go through the usual motions of regret flashbacks later in the series.

Anyone else think that despite the fact that Yurin’s death is a Gundam staple it’s still somewhat surprising in that they killed off a kid in a show aimed at grabbing that particular demographic. Besides that, I think the show finally hit the point where nobody’s going to be disputing i’st being a real Gundam show anymore.

The main issue right now with Age is that is way too predictable. Yurin’s death is blatanly the reverse situation of Lalah Sune’s demise in the original MSG (instead of the main Gundam pilot slaying her, is the antagonist) Am I the only one that’s seeing most moments of 0079 in an even childish environment? The Diva becoming a Pegasus II assault carrier, this… and the progression of the story is following Tomino’s path in UC (until Sunrise decide the moment the franchise steal a page of the R-Type series)
Seeing that SEED HD is being re-broadcast in TV and with the much better option of Rinne no Lagrange in the almost same timeslot of Age, things look truly bad for this attempt of doing a Gundam series.
Sunrise, where is The Origin?!

Man talk about how predictable but the MC is so damn weak, I mean if this happen to Garrod Ran he’d probably do something to get save the their lover. Can’t think for a better
reason to watch this. I hope the next arc is less predictable ^_^

Yeah Garrod really rocks I mean in just 2 episodes he did some really impressive moves,
like hijacking mobilesuits with a home made flashbang and a 9mm pistol; what the hell.
And also the last few episodes he is really persistent to save Tiffa even it means waging war against a whole army ^_^

The best thing about this episode I thought was the reintroduction of the human element entailed when pilots fight. The brief full power charge of the Titus was also a plus.

Unfortunately the rest of the episode was somewhat of a letdown. Felt the BGMs were a bit lacking and couldn’t keep up with the importance of the battles. The predictability of Yurin’s death also drained out a lot of the emotion from that scene. Still it was a commendable try.

No idea what Grodek is thinking trying to take over an entire asteroid fortress with only 5(?) soldiers. Even the UE must have at least a few automated guards or something of the sort.

Shit, they had to ruin an excellent episode with the incredibly stupid reason Yurin had for passively doing whatever she was told. “They said i would never see you again”. WTF, did she really think at all the implications of sitting in a mecha cockpit? Come on, just hold her adopted father or the colony as a hostage or something.

Desil really played his part well though. He was remarkably irritating. He was so irritating that I really wished he was finished off. Well done on the VA and dialogue.

Grudech idea of an internal assault is not bad but really, did he prepare at all for it? It seemed like there was only a few assault troops that was seen. If this was his plan i would have expected he would have borrowed troops from the rebel colonies. With luck we’ll see more than that handful next week.

So far AGE need tighten up on the engineering and plot logic in the early parts. Given that it looks like humans pilot the UE mecha rather than AI, several parts in the previous episodes where the UE mecha stood around like idiots seem more stupid than before. Grudech’s tactics so far don’t impress unlike the last Gundam’s series’ Sumeragi but some parts do such as Elfamel’s survivor syndrome last episode

Well, they might have meant it in a “come with us or we’ll kill you” kind of way. I took that as the implication given who was making the threat and the fact they have nothing against blowing up the odd space colony for as yet unknown reasons.

Thing is, i was expecting that as one of the possibilities but if that was the case, that she was fearful for her life, she would have told Flit. I was actually waiting for her to say “Help Flit, they captured me and stuck me in here” or similar. In which case, Flit would then be free to disable the pink mecha and destroy the funnel/fangs/whatever. Instead he ended up dodging both mecha like the typical shonen hero idiot and asking why why why.

Seriously it doesn’t even need much of a change, just get her to ask him to save her and let Flit destory the pink mecha’s weapons and everything remains the same. She still overpowers Desil’s X-Round ability to take control of her mecha for a little while (enough for her to get between them) and get stabbed

Flit knows that Yurin is in that mobile suit against her will so it would be logical to assume that he would rescue her if he could. The problem is that between all her funnels firing from a distance and Desil constantly attacking at close range, Flit has a hard enough time staying alive let alone saving Yurin. Also, I think you overestimate Flit’s ability to disable Yurin’s mobile suit. Just simply cutting of a arm and a leg is not going to be enough as long as those funnels are flying around.

Gundam 00 over rated come on. After the staleness of Seed Destiny it was a breath of fresh air sure when I first watched I thought it was going to be another gundam lame I mean wing but it proved me wrong.

second season of 00 was as bad as seed destiny, well not really but it was pretty bad. i mean come onShow Spoiler ▼

army of suicide clones? i mean the destiny plan was bad, but you can’t tell me they didn’t jump the shark with the room full of ali clones that are only good enough to kamikaze. plus awakening of the trail blazer was kind of a stinker. poor feldt, her parents die, lockon dies, setsuna being a little cock tease “oh me and marina aren’t like that” then he goes off and turns into a half metal thing.

i really loved 00 for all the arthur c. clarke allusions and the over all message about understanding to help stop/prevent conflicts. but yeah the way they finished off the story was not good at all in my opinion.

This is an interesting take… as Flit is now on a path of rage and vengeance. With no time to even think about his feelings at all. I wonder how Emily will play into this considering the fact that she does become Flit final love interest based on their kid. I also wonder why would you decide to board onto a place with a bunch of X rounders… you’re asking for trouble.

That’s something they have hinted at previously when the cloaked men said “Earthlings”, as if they themselves were not from Earth. I’m not sure if they are a lost colony or not. Problem is, Age has not been giving us enough context. We only know that it’s an era of peace after an era of war where mobile suits were used. Nothing is mentioned about colonies outside of Earth sphere. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the UE are from the outer planets. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are from the Jovian sphere.

I guess is almost like a tradition that the love interest of a gundam pilot had to hit to bucket. Was like that in 0079,0080,Z,ZZ,Nu, Seed Destiny, maybe next gundam series the main pilot should just hide his lover behind a titanium steel fortress.

I am rather amused that they’ve completely abandoned the elaborate plan that they came up with just a couple episodes ago. Rather than having the grunt suits infiltrate the fortress and destroy it from within, like they said they would, they’re leaving all the grunts behind, and infiltrating directly.

As for that new unit… WTF are those legs? It looks like someone stuck the Bis Zam’s legs on a normal mobile suit body. That Gafran just barely comes up to its knee!

Since Yurin’s death has been covered ad nauseum in both this episode’s review/comments and the last’s, I’ll skip over anything I might have said about that and move on.

I gotta say, even though Gundam has never paid much heed to real-world military tactics/protocol, Grodek’s use of pretty much the entire bridge crew for his boarding action is really stretching it. I get that they could have all volunteered for the duty, but stuff like this is why science fictions ships generally boast a contingent of Marines. Since this show is targeted for younger viewers, I doubt we’ll see much of a firefight (if there is one at all), but it really doesn’t make any sense to risk specialist naval officers whose expertise is critical to the functioning of the ship when you could be using infantry who are trained for the kind of close quarters fighting they should be expecting. At any rate, this is a chance for Ensign Adams to buy the farm (the dude promised a family member he’d come back alive–by that point he was practically at Yurin-level warning flags as far as I was concerned). I also don’t think it’s a stretch to expect Grodek to die next episode either. I’ve been expecting it ever since he came out and revealed why he hated the UE. From Ahab to Alex Rowe, the vengeance-driven captains rarely live long when they go in for the kill.

I was also a bit disappointed that Wolf doesn’t look like he’ll get a final mini-arc in. As someone who actually got invested in his and Millais’s (possible) romantic subplot, I was left a bit confused last episode when Wolf kinda-sorta-not really answered the question about whether anything was going on between them. I’m sure that will be tied up by the end of the arc, but I was hoping it would make its way into the climax somehow.

That was the other thing I wanted to ask. I just wasn’t sure if I remembered correctly or not. What happen to that plan they had originally, or did they decide to change it the moment they found Diva’s new transformation upgrade? Unless the plan was changed mid way into battle?

Now that we have some time for Yurin’s death to sink in, I wished Divine had held on to the hope that Yurin would live to the bitter end. Things got a little boring ever since he saw that spoiler pic about next generation’s characters.

Anyway, I am very disappointed in Desil being such a weak villain brat. He has little class or character compared to a certain comet. His only claim to villain being Yurin’s death… despite it being something in the magnitude of Lacus’ death in Seed (if it were ever to happen) in place of Flay… is about as convincing as Grodek’s need to board Ambat to mirror a certain event in MSG.

And to dumb it down even further, let’s just tack on Gerra Zoi as the final boss… then let him pilot a piece of oversize rust bucket that is merely a mockery of Zeong? Seriously Sunrise? At this point, I like to think they are better off in reproducing the original Gundam.

Killing off a character I like for the sake of the boring choice, another bad mark for you Sunrise (killing off Yurin, Seed Destiny, plot of 00 movie).
Well I guess I get back to this later, time to go wrap up G and Unicorn.